


Like a Wounded Canonball, I Dreamed I Would Fall

by sbarmarj



Series: A War of Love [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 01:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbarmarj/pseuds/sbarmarj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first shot in a war Maria Hill is unprepared for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Wounded Canonball, I Dreamed I Would Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Brandi Carlile's Canonball. 
> 
> Apologies in advance for any typos. I should be studying for the bar, but instead I decided to write this, and it exploded my study schedule.

“Of course now that the supply lines are reopened its just a matter of time before the Afghanis can take over their own defense and all American troops will be moved out.” The British analyst keeps droning on. He accidently bumped into Maria on his way to the bar, and didn’t notice her look of annoyance. He looked her up and down, paused a moment too long on her chest, and launched into the current conversation. 

This is why being paraded around at black tie events, especially ones hosted by Stark, should not be part of her job. 

And it really wasn’t a conversation. A conversation implied Maria had the opportunity to respond. So far the longest sentence she managed was six words, “I am aware of the situation.” If she did enter the fray, she would tell him his analysis is rudimentary and oversimplified at best. And his intel is outdated. But, she decides to conserve her ammunition, and just let the analyst keep talking. Her selective hearing has improved since she started dealing with Stark. 

At least she is well armed. Her dress is effective, if not her normal weapon of choice. She knows wearing her uniform would be like coming to a gunfight with a sword, but it would be more comfortable. If Maria interpreted some of the looks that she had gotten, her dress was like showing up for a gunfight with a grenade launcher. 

Of course coming “well armed” means she also has to spend time defecting unwanted attacks like the one the analyst is currently waging.

“Deputy Director Hill,” Maria doesn’t turn around to identify the speaker. She knows the voice immediately even from the respectful distance the Captain maintains out of uniform.

Before Maria can answer, the analyst looks past Maria’s bare shoulders, and inspects the broad backs in evening jackets surrounding them. He clearly doesn’t realize the Captain was speaking to her. “Hill is here? I hear he is a real ball-buster.” 

If only he knew, but it isn’t the battle Maria is here to fight. However, she decides to seize the opening like a good field commander.

Turning gracefully, Maria gently touches the Captain’s elbow. Cool, smooth wool, not the spandex she is expecting almost distracts her. Before Steve can pull away, she shifts her weight softly towards him, extending her neck and tilting her head up so their eyes meet. A perfect feminine invitation. While she doesn’t use this physical manipulation often, she learned it like all agents. She can tell from the way that Steve extends his arm slightly so her hand rests naturally and he arches down towards her that Natasha’s lessons are working. More than his physical reaction, his silence and willingness to follow her lead proves he will never be a spy, but he is learning some subterfuge. The analyst hasn’t recognized him without his shield, and now he just seems like a man responding to an attractive woman. 

“Oh, Captain, the director would like a word with you, but he stepped out to take a call.” From the first breathy syllable, Maria removes any command from her voice, and ends with the slightest rise in her voice. She does not sound like the Deputy Director of SHEILD. 

Faster than she expects, and smoother than she thought possible for the Captain, Rogers smiles and leans a bit closer before responding, “Would you be so kind as to help me find the Director?” 

With a quick apology to the analyst and a promise to mention him to Hill, Maria lets Rogers lead her away. As soon as the analyst turns and looks for a new target, Maria straightens her shoulders.

“Report, Captain.” The command sounds more natural, even in an evening gown.

“Ms. Potts suggested you might need an escort.” Maria can hear her eyebrow arch. She tries to avoid emulating Fury, but sometimes its too easy and too fitting. Only when she feels Rogers’ nerves growing does she realize her fingers still rest gently around his arm. Gone is any fake polish Natasha might have taught him. This was the Steve Rogers she heard stories about when she first joined SHIELD. 

“I mean, Ms. Potts said you needed help…not that you can’t handle yourself. I mean—you obviously know what you are doing in a dress like that…” Steve blush has bloomed from his cheeks, across his face, down the back of his neck and dipped below his collar. Maria never noticed how his blush spread before. She probably never would if she wasn’t walking a breath behind him tucked into the space he made in the crowd. 

“I don’t mean…You look…nice. And you seem more comfortable here than I do.” The last part is more plaintive then Maria thinks Steve intended. His nerves aren’t entirely because he is Steve Rogers and she is a woman. Of course, she read Lewis’s reports about his re-education. Even the one about the importance of watching Firefly in the right god-damn order. (Maria actually left Lewis speechless when she hummed the first few bars of Jayne’s song in line at the mess onetime. Its not like she was the one frozen in ice for the better part of the last century.) Lewis’s forced socialization and contagious enthusiasm for pop culture have been only so successful in making Rogers comfortable in the 21st century. According to her private briefings, Lewis thought he still needed to mourn the years that he missed before he could figure out how to get jiggy with Facebook. While not exactly the way she would have put it, Maria is inclined to agree with the sentiment. 

The only time he seems at ease is when the Avengers are in the field. Being a soldier and a leader hasn’t really changed. New enemies, new weapons, new team, but same game. 

Before Rogers can make it worse Maria responds. “Thank you, Captain. And please thank Ms. Potts for the suggestion on my behalf.” 

It’s a small kindness and one Maria can afford at the moment. She wishes she dealt with the situation herself. It probably would have caused a scene and it certainly would have been unprofessional, but so personally satisfying. But, she is a soldier not a private citizen. 

And, Maria’s juvenile impulse would be unfair to Pepper Potts. According to Sitwell, Stark wants to blow the Kyoto Accord out of the water with his arc reactors. Of course, he left the details of how to make that happen to his CEO. This black-tie ball is Stark Industries’ opening salvo. Maria fully expects there will be agreements to install arc reactors around the world by the end of the weekend. Maybe it will make the world more peaceful. 

“I didn’t expect to see you here. It’s a nice surprise.” Rogers dips his head down slightly so she can hear better over the string quartet and gossiping socialites. 

“SHIELD is concerned anytime Stark is in the same room as a half a dozen world leaders.” Rogers smiles slightly. Maria might not have answered his question, but her response is still accurate. She knows she is deflecting. It is not an attack, so she can’t figure out why she is taken aback that the Capitan is happy to see her. He is the Avenger she speaks with the least. He completes his mission reports and follows her orders. His messes are the quietest, and if they looked like they are going to get out of hand, Lewis was surprisingly good at cleaning up minor disasters. 

“Even with Pepper as a chaperone?” he asks.

“There is only so much Ms. Potts can do with a chair and whip.” Maria is standing close enough to Rogers to feel the laugh rumble in his chest. 

“Have you walked through the gallery?” Steve has subtly guided them to the entrance ramp. Its an invitation she shouldn’t accept. Wrapping up the spiral will pull her away from the milling crowd, and spin her closer to this man.

“No, not yet.” Even before she answers she is already moving, feeling her spirits lift with the incline. Rogers follows in her wake. He hears her oblique acceptance. 

Neither leads, but Maria pauses when Rogers does to study the paintings. It’s a comfortable silence as the circle the rotunda. Even out of costume, his presence clears space around them, and shelters Maria from engaging in inane conversation with other guests.

“I’ve seen this one before. The Met hung it in his first retrospective there. My mother took me into the city to see it for my birthday. I remember thinking how lonely that woman looked. When I got home that night I wondered if that’s what my life would feel like.” Rogers doesn’t look at her when he says any of this. Instead he stares at the woman sitting alone in the automat, eyes turned down, quietly drinking her coffee, fending off the chill of the urban winter. Maria understands what Rogers is not saying. 

“Hopper depresses me.” At this Rogers turns to look at her. He doesn’t try to hide the surprise from his face and he says as much when he tells her he didn’t know she likes art. 

It amuses her that this is the part of her that surprises the Capitan. He does not question her competence, or undermine her authority. He accepts her decisions and follows her orders. Most other men who join SHEILD have to adjust to taking orders from a woman. It’s the ones who learn quickly that SHIELD keeps.

Phil would say that its just part of being Capitan America, but then Phil was the first person to congratulate her when Fury announced her promotion five months ago. She only found out that Phil put money on her running the place when he recruited her ten years ago. Fury told her about the bet, right before he told her she wasn’t ready for the promotion. According to Fury, she out lived the other, more qualified, candidates and he hoped she didn’t fuck it up before she figured it out. She never had the chance to tell Phil that there were moments his confidence was her north star.

No, it has nothing to do with being Capitan America. It has everything to do with Steve Rogers being a good guy, much like Phil Coulson. 

“My grandmother wanted me to be an art history major.” Rogers nods at this bit of information. Maria thinks he is adding depth to whatever picture of her he is painting, and it is disconcerting to realize she wonders if he likes that painting. She wants Steve Rogers to think that there is more to her than being a soldier. “She was one. So was my mother.”

Maria doesn’t really know when her awareness of the Capitan shifted. She use to think of him as a tool she could use—a soldier she could command. Now she notices his eyes are a true blue, and he has a tiny mole under his left ear. 

“Did it disappoint them when you joined SHIELD?” From anyone else, the question would be rude. From Stark, it would be a declaration of war. From Rogers it is simply sweet and curious. 

“I don’t know.” Rogers doesn’t even have to prompt her to continue. “My grandmother came to terms with my decision to join the Air Force. She died before I joined SHIELD.”

“And your mother?” She needs the prompt, or she would have left the rest unsaid. 

“She died when I was born. I don’t know what she wanted for me.” Maria stopped trying to know her mother’s dreams and aspirations for her long ago. Her father told her too many times she was disappointing the woman she only met once in swaddling cloth. Even scarred this old wound hurts. 

“My mother always told me my father would be proud of me, but I wondered how she could say that when I needed Bucky to beat the bullies.” 

Maria knows Rogers has shifted into her space, his hand hovering next to her fingers. She isn’t surprised when his fingers find hers and subtly squeeze. 

She pulls her hand away from Rogers as she speaks, but she still offers him something personal. 

“This is one of my favorite buildings. My grandmother and I use to come here and joke about roller-skating down the rotunda.” As soon as she opens her mouth the energy between them changes into a new, brighter palette. Maria is an honest enough coward to feel relieved. Thankfully Rogers seems as willing to retreat from their shared grief, and its harrowing intimacy. 

They are walking again, but now they are focused on each other and not the art. They easily navigate around the other party guests who are more interested in each other than in one couple who held hands for a breath. As the Rotunda widens, Maria can feel the space between her duties and her attention growing. 

“This wasn’t here…well, when I lived here before. I keep trying to get Darcy to come, but we haven’t made it yet.” Maria knows that most of Rogers and Lewis’s visits to museums involve the young woman listening to her Ipod and texting with Barton, while Steve wanders. 

“I read about Falling Water when he built it. Bucky found an old Life about it when I was laid up in bed with pneumonia.” Steve stops. Maria thinks its because he is remembering Bucky, but she wonders if he regrets revealing something genuine to her. According to Lewis, he won’t answer questions about Bucky, Agent Carter, and the other people he lost. She says sometimes he forgets and mentions them, but never to SHEILD. She knows he has still not forgiven SHEILD for the weapons, and she is SHEILD. 

But, before her concern becomes real anxiety, Steve smiles and continues, “You know this is the first time I have ever been in one of his buildings. I use to dream of being an architectural drafter. To get to draw buildings like this.” 

Even though they have physically shifted away from each other, Maria is sure now that Rogers is choosing to share a part of him with her he keeps hidden from most people. They don’t notice his deliberate withholding and only see the super hero. She likes this man, as hurt and lost as he is, more than the assured and assertive Capitan. 

As if realizing their conversation is veering back to tortured ground, Rogers continued “You grew up in the city?” 

“No, Chicago. My grandparents would bring me when they came here. You should see Fallingwater. Ride your bike, it’s worth the trip, especially in the fall. When I was little I begged my grandmother to build me a tree house like it.” She is not sure why she adds the personal story. It is entirely unnecessary, and yet it felt right to tell him. 

“You’ve been there, too? I figured you would spend more time blowing buildings up than admiring them.” Steve smiles at her just enough, so she knows he is teasing her. 

“My grandmother was an architect. She liked to share buildings with me.” Now Maria visits famous buildings by herself. Sometimes she thinks she can hear her grandmother whispering. Most of the time they just feel empty. 

Steve nods. Of course he would understand what she won’t say. He runs miles and miles through the city in the morning, usually in Brooklyn. Maria didn’t need Lewis to explain he is revisiting the places he use to live, missing the people he use to know, looking for the world he lost. The gossip blogs call him a man out of time. Maria thinks he is a man with too much time. 

“Did she build you the tree house?” 

The question is not meant to make her sad. But, as happy as parts of her memories of that tree house are, they are also too dark to visit often. Most of her memories of childhood are like that. 

“She did. Not at my father’s house, but in her backyard. My father didn’t like me to visit. He thought she was just spoiling me.” Her grandmother meant it to be a retreat, a place for her to imagine and play, to be happy and a child. It ended up being one more thing her father used to hurt her. One more thing her father held against her grandmother. “He thought it was a waste of time for me to play house, and to go to museums.”

“Did he want you to join the Air Force?” 

Maria thinks about retreating now. She could beg off, make up a pressing matter, or find someone she needed to talk to. She could find the annoying analyst, offer to set up an interview with Fury. She might win the battle, but she suspects this is the first shot of a war she is going to lose. 

“I didn’t do it for him, or to spite him.” She never considered her father when she made the decision, and she doesn’t think that he had an opinion either way about her joining up.

If she wanted to rebel she would have gone to Smith and majored in art history. Her grandmother would have been thrilled, and Maria thinks she might have been happy there. It has been a longtime since she wondered what that life would have felt like.

Maria realizes Steve’s silence is deliberate. He is giving her the chance to say what she wants without being forced to answer his question. His kindness surprises her. She doesn’t encounter compassion often, and almost never from the men she commands. 

“I did it because I love flying.” If Maria is reading the captain correctly, he was expecting something else, maybe something less…glib. It’s her only answer that is still true. 

“No sense of duty?” 

Of course. Maria should’ve expected that, especially from him. 

“I thought I was being patriotic when I was eighteen.” Her naivety almost makes her shudder. Of course she felt a sense of duty. Her father walked the same South Side beat in July when people died from heat stroke, and January when they froze to death. Her grandfather lost one arm on D-Day. He would have given the other if the country asked. 

“Now you think it’s not patriotic to serve your country?” Maria can hear the faint tones of disapproval Steve is trying to hide. His blue eyes are icy now. More startling, his body draws way from her. She realizes how subtly he lowered his defenses to her since they started talking. She misses his open warmth. 

“Of course its patriotic, but I thought it was majestic and noble then.” That is more than she usually says, it is more true than her normal answer, but its not enough for this man. He deserves more. “I hadn’t been shot down, held a man while he died, or lost good soldiers because I gave bad orders. I didn’t understand what it meant to kill a person simply because I was ordered to. I thought it was all heroics and doing what was right.” 

At eighteen, she ignored the three pairs of wool socks her father wore in January, how her grandmother always cut her grandfather’s food. 

Roger’s eyes are too honest to hide his understanding. He knows the unsavory parts of duty, the hidden burdens of soldiering, the sharp wounds of command. 

Together they wander far above the glittering, gleeful partygoers. Even in evening clothes they are two soldiers apart from the people they protect. Except one of them is more than that, more than a man. It’s the legend Maria does not like, the hero children want to be. She envies him, his ability to hide his chipped soul behind a cowl.

“I use to award purple hearts at field hospitals.” Maria startles at his voice breaking the silence, and at the information she didn’t know before. Its really not information she needs to know to command Captain America. 

“I remember each of them. The wounds, the destroyed limbs, the fevers and infections. That was the hardest thing for the field hospitals, you know. But mostly I just remember the waste.” 

Maria knows a thing or two about injuries in the field. She knows the smell of rotting flesh that Steve isn’t mentioning. And she knows the waste he means. She numbers the cracks in her soul by the soldiers she has lost. 

“They call me a hero.” Steve doesn’t hide his bitterness, it’s the most open thing he has said to her since he thawed, and his eyes won’t meet hers. Instead, he looks at a Bellows’ of two boxers. Maria is sure he sees nothing on the canvas, not the rush of fists, or the intimacy of the ropes. 

She will never understand the men who refused to put Captain America in the field. Maria might not like the world depending on heroes, but she will send Steve Rogers into battle first every single time. She will tolerate Stark, allow Banner to be free, acknowledge a mythological god, trust the Widow, and forgive Barton if it means saving a single life. 

Maria realizes that this conversation has again ended on an unexpected front. Neither seems ready to speak, and instead Rogers’ studies the broad strokes of the painting, and Maria quietly catalogs their options for cover if HYDRA were to intrude. Its calming, but leaves her thoughts free to consider this conversation. Talking with Steve is a series of ill attempted feints, short volleys, and unexpected, direct hits. Even though she has no idea what this battle is about, she feels the urge to hoist a white flag.

“I joined the Air Force instead of the Army because I wanted to be an astronaut, an explorer.” A childish dream only three other people knew, now it’s an intimacy she wants to share with him.

“Really?” He does smile, and she thinks he sees all the subtle humor of it. She hasn’t been in space, but she has eaten pop-tarts with an alien prince. It is one of life’s unexpected jokes.

“You could still do it. I am sure they would take you, especially with your unique experience.” The last is just slightly wry, and delivered with a twinkle in his eye and the faint tick in his mouth. She never realized Rogers has a quiet, wicked humor behind his nerves. 

Of course he is right. It’s a dream that is still open to her. She should consider herself lucky.

“Its better as a dream. I am happier with SHEILD.” The moment she says it she realizes how unintentionally cruel a thing it is to say to him. She knows his dreams are lost to him, and his reality nothing he ever wanted. Her face must show her horror, because he gently reaches across the few inches separating them, around her back, and rests his hand lightly on her hip. It’s almost a hug and Maria is not sure if he is offering forgiveness, or she is trying to lessen the hurt of her words. Either way they both lean into the touch, and let it speak for them.

Maria knows she is totally unprepared for the war that is coming.

**Author's Note:**

> The party is set at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and opened in 1959. Wright also designed Fallingwater as a weekend home for the Kauffmann family in 1935. It appeared in both Time and Life magazines in January of '38. I highly recommend googling photos of it and if you are ever near Pittsburgh going to see it. 
> 
> The first painting that Maria and Steve look at is "Automat" by Edward Hopper, completed in 1927. I am not sure that it hung in his first show at the Met in 1933 but its likely given the painting's importance in his career. 
> 
> The second painting is George Bellows' "The Art of Boxing." I included it because it always makes me think of Steve. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! I am going to sink into a pit of property law right now, but I am hoping to get the sequel up before the bar exam.


End file.
